Bill increases fossil fuels research

Fossil fuels and nuclear energy are big winners in the House Appropriations Committee’s energy and water spending bill that was released Tuesday.

The Energy Department would get $32.1 billion for fiscal 2013, nearly $1 billion below what President Barack Obama requested.

Story Continued Below

Of DOE’s proposed money, $11.3 billion would go to nuclear security operations and weapons research programs, a $275 million bump from fiscal 2012.

The bill would give a 60 percent funding increase — to $554 million — to research and development of coal, oil and natural gas, a $207 million jump from this year.

An additional $765 million would go to nuclear energy research and demonstration, about the same amount as 2012, as well as $25 million to keep Yucca Mountain in Nevada operational.

The proposal would also increase funding for DOE gasoline programs to just more than $1 billion, a small bump from 2012. That includes $25 million for a shale oil research program that the committee says “fills a major hole” in DOE’s development efforts.

Environmental management programs would get $5.5 billion, down $166 million from 2012. The vast majority of that, $5 billion, would go to defense-related cleanups of nuclear weapons production sites.

Science research would hold steady at $4.8 billion, despite Obama administration requests to bump it up to nearly $5 billion.

Funding for the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program would hold steady at $6 million, an administrative allocation that does not include the original money set aside for loans. The Obama administration had requested a bump up to $9 million.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which funds research on technology such as vehicle batteries and solar panels, would get $200 million, down from the $275 million it received in 2012.